Late in a recent matinee of “The Laramie Project,” the steady tears of a woman in a nearby row turned to sobbing. It wasn’t a distraction so much as a confirmation that the tragedy that led playwright Moisés Kaufman and a team of fellow theater makers from his company, Tectonic Theater Project, to descend upon Laramie, Wyo., with compassionate and questioning hearts remains rending. And given the uptick in violence directed at people who identify as LGBTQ+, its lessons remain timely.
On Oct. 12, it will have been 25 years to the day that Matthew Shepard died at Fort Collins’ Poudre Valley Hospital, where he was taken after being robbed, severely beaten and left tied to a wood-railing fence outside Laramie. Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, the assailants who posed as gay to gain Shepard’s trust, are serving consecutive life sentences for his murder.
In a fine departure from its often satisfying but cautious programming, the Arvada Center — under artistic director Lynne Collins — is staging the docudrama with the polish its productions so often have. The ensemble is aided by the mindful direction of Kate Gleason and Rodney Lizcano, themselves talented actors. The play received its world premiere in 2000 at the Denver Center.
In a welcome gesture of transparency, the play begins with Kaufman (played by Lizcano) telling the audience what went into its making. “On November 14, 1998, the members of Tectonic Theater Project traveled to Laramie, Wyoming, and conducted interviews with the people of the town,” he begins. Over the next year, the theater-makers would return to Laramie several times. All told, they conducted over 200 interviews with townsfolk.
Material from those interviews, excerpts from the company members’ journals and other news and archival sources comprise a work that feels truthful even though its flow is the work of craftsmanship. In this way, the play can’t and shouldn’t take the place of journalism. Though at times the approach bests journalism in grappling with the questions “Why?” and “How?,” it insists that we keep asking questions of events, of our understanding of them (then and now), and of ourselves.
The cast numbers eight; the characters they inhabit, more than 60. Among them: a university theater professor; a sheriff; the young cyclist who discovered Shepard barely breathing (initially, he thought it was a scarecrow); the policewoman who answered that cyclist’s 911 call; the Fireside Lounge owner and bartender; a waitress; University of Wyoming chancellor; hospital CEO and spokesperson for the Shepard family; Dennis Shepard (father of Matthew); a variety of ministers; and the killers. The playwrighting team members are also represented.
With so many characters, some will connect in different ways for each audience member. Take actor Christopher Hudson’s embodiment of theater geek Jedadiah Schultz, whose parents, he shares, saw every show he’d ever been in until he took a role in Tony Kushner’s AIDS masterwork, “Angels in America.” Hudson also portrays bartender Matt Galloway, who was serving up drinks the night Shepard left with McKinney and Henderson. They are two young men, differently confident, differently humbled by the enormity of the event.
The play is rife with demands that stretch and call for subtlety from its performers. The actors have brought their best to those challenges. Warren Sherrill is boisterous as Doc O’Connor, a limousine driver, then solemn as the family spokesperson and hospital CEO. Suzanne Jada Dixon leans amusingly into theater professor Rebecca Hilliker, and then kicks back, laughing as her character Alison Mears and Marge Murray (a very fine Anne Oberbroeckling) talked with Tectonic member Greg Pierotti (Torsten Hillhouse). Or, as he says of them, “two social service workers who taught me a thing or two.”
Susannah McLeod’s portrayal of Reggie Fluty, the police officer who arrived at that field, is touching, for her description of that encounter with Shephard but also later when she fears she might have contracted HIV. And Chrys Duran’s portrayal of Zubaida Ula, a Muslim woman who grew up in Laramie, serves as a gentle rejoinder to the too-easy notion of “good town/good people.”
Moments make up “The Laramie Project,” yet it doesn’t feel fractured. Staged sparingly with wooden risers and a backdrop of rectangular screens in various sizes (scenic design by Tina Anderson), the play feels operatic. All the players are often on the stage, a Greek chorus befitting tragedy, and the lighting design (Jon Olson) and sound (original music and sound by Max Silverman) guide our attention. The production’s use of projections (by Garrett Thompson) is evocative of place — the university, the bar where Matthew met his killers, the city — but never busy. Images of wide grassland prairie are beckoning, contemplative even before turning sorrowful.
The gift of “The Laramie Project” is to give voice to the citizens of a town reeling, reckoning but also feeling tarnished by a violent and bigoted act, and the influx of journalists probing what kind of place nurtured it.
All the onstage reckoning, defensiveness and grappling toward understanding what happened and why doesn’t change the fact that Shepard died. But the power of theater does provide a sanctuary of consideration. To that end, on Oct. 28 and 29, Matthew’s parents, Judy and Dennis Shepard, will be at the Arvada Center for two talkbacks, beginning at 5 p.m. The events are free, but registration is requested.
IF YOU GO
“The Laramie Project”: Written by Moisés Kaufman and the members of Tectonic Theater Project, specifically Leigh Fondakowski, Stephen Belber, Greg Pierotti and Stephen Wangh. Directed by Kate Gleason and Rodney Lizcano. Featuring Jada Suzanne Dixon, Chrys Duran, Torsten Hillhouse, Christopher Hudson, Lizcano, Susannah McLeod, Anne Oberbroeckling and Warren Sherrill. At the Arvada Center, 6901 Wadsworth Blvd., Arvada, through Nov. 5. For tickets and info: arvadacenter.org or 720-898-7200
